


maybe before the world ends (can we be brave?)

by eurydicees



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Episode: s02e08 The Chase, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Late Night Conversations, Pre-Relationship, Tenderness, might write a part two idk yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydicees/pseuds/eurydicees
Summary: Love is a kind of bravery, and Mai isn't sure if she has it anymore. There was a time when the two of them could be together, but getting caught and separated between city and circus and Azula has a way of changing things like that.While chasing the Avatar, Ty Lee finds her in her room, and Mai tries to find courage again.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 58





	maybe before the world ends (can we be brave?)

One day, Mai knows, the world is going to end. 

One day, she knows, all of this is going to be gone. The Fire Nation will have finally burnt itself to the ground. The Water Tribes will have drowned in the ever rising tide. The Earth Kingdom will have sunk into the ground. The Air Nomads… they’re already gone. One day, everyone else will be too. 

It’s something that she thinks about often. It doesn’t haunt her in the way that fear does, no, it haunts her in the way that a memory does. She knows it will happen, she’s accepted it. By now, she doesn’t even really mind it. Sometimes it’s even comforting. 

It’s something to hold onto while she stays sleepless in bed. She has her own room on the train Azula commissioned, a place she can be quiet and think. It’s simple, traditional, and Mai looks at the sparse walls and tries not to feel just as empty. She can hear someone outside the room, a stoker making his way to the furnaces. 

One day, this train will be gone. The fire will have ended. The kids that they’re chasing will be gone, probably burnt into crisps and then cut into ashes. Mai will be gone. Azula will be gone. Maybe peace will come when the two of them are dead.

She doesn’t regret it, all of the things she’s done while at Azula’s side. She never had a choice in the matter. Sitting next to Azula that first day at the Royal Fire Academy had ensured that she would spend the rest of her life sitting at her side. 

Azula took one glance at her-- the shy way she would duck her head under the eye of a teacher, the cold half-hearted smile she would give someone she didn’t like, the controlled glint in her eyes-- and Mai had been locked away. She never had a chance. 

Mai should have predicted this a long time ago. After leaving and going to Omashu, she thought it might be over. Azula would leave her alone and she could die in silence, rather than in war. 

But _Azula called a little louder,_ Ty Lee had said. 

That’s just the way of things, Mai knows. Azula calls for the two of them and they come. She wonders, sometimes, what exactly Ty Lee’s call had been-- whether it had been anger or lies or threats or fire, or maybe all of the above. Mai hasn’t been brave enough to ask yet. 

She’s sitting in bed, flipping a butterfly knife in her hand, the blade a part of her body even more than her own fingers are, when Ty Lee comes in. 

They haven’t talked much since they got on the train at Azula’s side and been briefed on the plan. It’s been so long since they’ve spoken. Ty Lee had gone to the circus and the circus moved around too much to receive letters-- at least that’s what Ty Lee had said. Mai has doubts about the truth of that, but it’s only another thing she’s too cowardly to ask. If it is a lie, and Ty Lee had simply not wanted to talk to her, Mai doesn’t know if she would be able to take that silently. 

But despite the worry that Ty Lee doesn’t want to be with her, the door slides open with a creak, and a shadow passes over the candle that Mai lit on the table by the bed. Ty Lee moves slowly, in that kind of wisp of a way that she does. Like her body is a part of the air itself, making the wind move with her rather than marching through earth and sea in the demanding way that Azula did. 

“Mai?” Ty Lee asks, and she comes into the light. 

A shadow is dancing over her face, her lips curved into a hesitant smile, the smile that comes with the awkwardness of old friends. Ty Lee stops after closing the door, in a spot where the shadows still fold her body into darkness and the only illumination is the glitter of gray eyes and the shine of lipgloss. 

“Hi,” Mai whispers. She sits up straighter, snapping the knife closed. She grips it tightly in her hand, palms sweating just enough to make it almost slip when Ty Lee moves closer. “What are you doing?” 

Ty Lee shrugs, glancing around the room for a moment before turning to Mai. She wonders, at first, what Ty Lee is looking for, but then she remembers the way Azula used to listen in on their conversations, kneeling at the other end of the vents or just outside the windows. The best way to get blackmail, Mai recalls, is to listen in on the sound of a kiss-- 

_Don’t think about it._

“Can I sit?” Ty Lee asks, looking towards the bed. 

Mai nods, one swift, sharp motion, then moves over slightly to make more room. Once she has permission, Ty Lee doesn’t hesitate in going over. She sits down next to Mai, the mattress dipping under her weight, and puts herself as close as possible without touching. Mai can hear her breathing, can feel her body heat, and she aches. It’s been so long and too long and not nearly long enough. 

“I missed you, you know,” Ty Lee says quietly. 

She leans her head against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees. She’s holding herself close in the darkness, as if trying to keep a hand from reaching out and finding a blade too sharp to touch, a blade made out of skin and the threat of being caught. Mai mimics her position, pulling her knees up to her chest and holding them with her hands. The blade has been dropped at her side, the blunt part laying against her upper thigh. 

“I missed you too,” Mai tells her, and it’s not a lie. “I would’ve written, but…” 

Ty Lee sighs, staring at the door, half expecting it to open and reveal an angry, laughing Azula. “I would’ve read your letters, if they had come.” 

“I didn’t ever know where you were,” Mai says. 

That’s a lie, but it’s not one Mai will ever admit to. Most of the time, she hadn’t known, but she was always looking for word of the circus. It had come just outside of Omashu one week and Mai had taken a look at the poster, where Ty Lee was drawn in some impossible position, legs above her hands and a painted smile too small for real happiness. 

She had wanted to go. She ripped the poster down and looked at it long into the night, then placed it neatly on her desk. In the morning, she burned it. It would hurt too much to look at Ty Lee’s flight and not be able to hold her afterwards. 

“I’m here now,” Ty Lee tells her. 

Mai nods. She’s watching the door too. “I wish it were under different circumstances.” 

“You mean if…” 

“You know what I mean.” Mai takes a long breath. “I wish you hadn’t left.” 

Ty Lee swallows, glancing at Mai. There’s something uncertain in her eyes, something that Mai had only seen once before, the first time Ty Lee had whispered a question and then reached over to cup her chin and kiss-- 

_Don’t think about it._

“You left too,” Ty Lee says. “It wasn’t just me.” 

“I didn’t have a choice.” 

Ty Lee shrugs, the fabric of her shirt shifting loudly. Her breath is a familiar pattern, and Mai could swear that she heard Ty Lee’s heartbeat. 

There’s a carefully practiced silence that Mai has built up in her head over the years. It’s a determination to never feel anything, to never love anything, to never want anything. But Ty Lee shifts again, to look at her, to run her eyes over the sharp angle of Mai’s jaw and the curl of her eyelashes and the blush at her cheeks, and all Mai does is want. 

“We always have a choice,” Ty Lee says softly. It’s a lie, and they both know it. 

“We’re here now,” Mai tells her. She doesn’t look. “Is that enough?” 

Ty Lee turns away, biting at the inside of her cheek. It’s an old habit, one that clearly hadn’t changed in the years they’d been apart. Mai wonders how much else had stayed the same, and how much was left for Mai to relearn. 

“It could be,” Ty Lee said. “If you still want.” 

“Do you?” 

Ty Lee looks at her, and this time she’s so clearly sure of herself that it almost scares Mai a little bit. Ty Lee had always been the brave one, of the two of them. She had been the one to get close to Azula, to be able to hug her and smile at her and not acknowledge the power imbalance. She had been the one to turn an impartial glance into happiness. She had been the one to leave first, and of her own volition. And Azula had let her. 

“I’ve always wanted this,” Ty Lee said. “Whatever this-- whatever _enough--_ is for you.” 

She’s staring at Mai and she’s speaking with a confidence you could only get from performing for crowds who were just there for a laugh. She’s both so familiar and so alien at the same time. Mai looks at her out of the corner of her eye and wonders what she’s been doing and with who. She wonders if Ty Lee would still kiss the same, after so much time. 

“It didn’t end well before,” Mai reminded her. 

It still haunts her. One day, she knows, the world will truly end. But the world has already ended two dozen times before. The world ended when Ty Lee smiled at her and Mai realized she was half gone before she had even said hello. The world ended when Azula roped them together and told them they were going to shape the world in her father’s image. The world ended when they kissed for the first time, and Mai couldn’t deny it anymore. The world ended when they got caught. 

Ty Lee looks away. She’s breathing steadily, and Mai wonders where she found all of that peace. Mai has composure, has a stone wall for an opinion, but Ty Lee has some kind of nirvana. Some kind of eye in the storm that was a war fought by fifteen year olds. “It doesn’t have to end the same way.” 

“No,” Mai says. “But it might.” 

“Love is a risk.” 

Mai flinches at that, heart dropping from her chest and getting struck by the sharp knife of her ribs. They’d never called it love before. They’d called it friendship. They’d called it a secret. They had both known that it was more than that, but neither had ever said it out loud. That kind of touch, that kind of kiss, that kind of _love_ wasn’t meant to exist, much less be admitted or spoken about. 

“It doesn’t have to be the same,” Ty Lee says, swallowing. 

She had noticed Mai’s panic; she always notices Mai. Every slight movement, every drop of her mask-- Ty Lee knows it, has put it all in a little box in her head to think about when people ask her if Mai feels anything at all. She always notices the little cracks where Mai puts her heart on her tongue or in the twitch of an eye or the blush of skin she can’t hide with black eyeshadow. 

_“We_ don’t have to be the same,” Ty Lee adds. “We can just be… us.” 

Mai turns to her, and Ty Lee doesn’t look away. She holds Mai’s gaze, and Mai can do nothing but let her. She can do nothing but watch the slight curve of a smile, the little imperfections at her skin, the streaks of gray in her eyes, the strand of hair that had slipped away from the elastic and fallen over her cheek. She can do nothing but watch and remember and want. 

It’s an old ache. Mai doesn’t remember ever not feeling it. She doesn’t remember a time when Ty Lee and her stupid pink aura hadn’t drawn her in, quelled Mai’s fears and pulled her into a new gravity, a new rotation. If Ty Lee is the sun, Mai is nothing more than an asteroid, falling into line with the rest of the universe as she rotates around that light. 

She thought maybe it would fade with time. They were just kids and it was nothing more than friendship. Then they were a few years older, a few experimental kisses older, and Mai couldn’t keep her eyes away. They learned to fit their hands together and sleep in the same bed and kiss when no one was looking, and Mai knew the feeling was never going to fade. 

But after everything fell apart and they had gone their separate ways, the ache had faded. It was a dulled bruise rather than a gaping wound. Except here with Ty Lee’s shoulder pressed against her own and the heat of her smile on Mai’s cheeks, that bruise had spilled open again. 

She doesn’t realize how long she’s been quiet and staring until Ty Lee nudges her shoulder just slightly, enough to pull her out of her memories. Ty Lee is watching her, eyes wide, a shadow of a blush at her cheeks. She’s not nervous, not expecting anything, Mai can tell. Ty Lee might want something more, but she’s not stupid in the way that people think she is. She can hear the words coming. 

“What are you thinking?” Ty Lee prompts anyways. 

The candle is flickering, and Mai tries to smile at her. Her face is still taut in that careful, practiced mask. She’s taught herself to be quiet and quell any feeling that could be used against her. Ty Lee-- what Mai feels for her-- is the ultimate weapon, the ultimate weakness. 

“Do you love me?” Mai asks. 

It’s just a breath, just a whisper, but Ty Lee catches it. She’s always caught her when lies and doubts start falling down. 

“I’ve always loved you,” Ty Lee says, voice strong, confident, trusting. 

Mai nods and turns away. The door is firmly shut, but she can easily imagine the way it would fall down when flames started licking through the keyhole. 

“Do you still love me?” Ty Lee asks her. She’s less confident now, but that hitch of strength in the words is brave. 

Mai shrugs, closes her eyes. “I can’t.” 

Ty Lee nods. She doesn’t say anything else. There’s nothing more to say. 

She keeps her eyes shut when Ty Lee reaches the door and starts to leave. Mai has always been a coward.

But Ty Lee stops, just before she leaves. She stands at the arch of the doorway and looks back, for just a moment. When Mai finally opens her eyes to look, Ty Lee smiles at her. It’s the gentle, forgiving kind of smile that Mai does not deserve in any lifetime. In watching her, that smile, that sadness in her eyes, that broken youth in her voice, Mai can feel another world begin to end. 

“Let me know when you can,” Ty Lee says. “I’ll wait for you.” 

Somehow, Mai finds it in her to nod, just barely there. It’s an admission, it’s a confession-- it’s a vow. Ty Lee exhales and turns around. She watches as the door clicks shut and Ty Lee’s footsteps begin to fade somewhere down the hallway.

Mai takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them, she is still breathing. The world is still there. Maybe, before it ends, she will learn to be brave. Maybe, before everything disappears, she will kiss--

_Don’t think about--_

No, Mai begins to promise, one day before the world ends, she will kiss Ty Lee and she will not be afraid.


End file.
